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MAKING CONTACT Transcript: #12-99 No More Wastelands: Environmental Justice (Part II) Phillip Babich: Welcome to Making Contact, an international radio program seeking to create a connection between people, vital ideas and important information. This week on Making Contact- Connie Tucker: We're not gonna to get rid of environmental injustices or environmental racism or class-based discrimination without some sort of economic restructuring. Bradley Angel: We all want to get this site cleaned up. We all want to see Superfund sites cleaned up, but let's not create new toxic problems while we address old ones. Phillip Babich: A movement for environmental justice is growing in the United States. Efforts to protect communities affected by industrial pollution have broadened as activists address social and economic factors that often surround such concerns. More and more they are taking into account poverty and race and forming coalitions with organizations that previously might not have considered joining an environmental issue. On this program, we examine some of the coalition building that is behind the environmental justice movement. I'm Phillip Babich, your host this week on Making Contact. Environmental groups in the United States address a wide range of issues, from land use and conservation to wildlife habitat and saving endangered species. Some of the more established environmental organizations focus largely on these issues. A new strand of environmentalism has emerged over the last decade. Known as the environmental justice movement, it generally focuses on economic and racial discrimination, and the consistent manner in which industry and regulatory agencies single out communities of color and low-income neighborhoods as recipients for waste emissions and hazardous chemicals. Connie Tucker is the executive director of the Southern Organizing Committee for Economic and Social Justice in Atlanta, Georgia. Her organization has worked since the early 1990s to help communities throughout the South to confront poverty, racism and now environmental threats. Connie Tucker: When you organize people around an injustice, you are merely organizing them around their own needs. For example, we do a lot of work in communities -- waste communities, Superfund communities, the most toxic sites across the country almost -- that are places on the national priorities list. Environmentalists don't bother with that kind of stuff. You know it's not like if the problem already existed, they're more interested in stopping the problem before it happens. And I agree with that as well. I think that we have to do that too. But people who have been adversely impacted by a problem puts a face on the problem. And those people are really more willing to take radical positions about that problem because they have been impaired by the problem. And so we think that by organizing people who have been adversely impacted by environmental assaults is a way of approaching a cultural change in communities of color. And we primarily are working in African-American communities in the south. It is so important for us to, even in the face of this very serious chemical assault on our communities -- we're getting this direct hit, so to speak -- all... everybody's getting harmed by it, but we're getting this kind of direct hit, where there's systematic targeting. And you know, there's some people who disagree with that. But we think we... certainly what we see in the south, ain't no question about it. You know, people of color basically have said "We really need to speak for ourselves on this." And the environmental justice movement is that conscious, that movement that has recognized that we are under a major assault. And it is synergistic. It is not... it's multi-sourced, you know. And it's coming at us from all directions. From the illegal street drugs to the chemicals that they're giving children like Ritalin in the schools, to the environmental assaults, both industrial and some of the residential problems like lead, etcetera. You can't simply just stop the environmental contamination when it's tied to corporate greed. And you gotta address that. You can't tip toe around. And the environmental groups weren't ready to take that position. They still are not ready to come out and say "Hey. We got a problem. We've got a system that creates these kind of problems." Rather, the environmental justice movement says, "Hey. We can't just do this with a band aid approach, because we're not gonna solve the problem with a band aid approach. It takes systemic change." Phillip Babich: Corporate power is being challenged all over the world, as residents feel compelled to confront polluting companies in their own communities. Tucker says that local groups are beginning to see that it is necessary to link with other movements nationally and globally that are experiencing similar problems in order to deal with transnational corporations. Connie Tucker: Well we help people at the local level, and then we connect them with other communities in their state. Because, you know, a movement dries up on the vine if it doesn't get beyond the local. In fact, we find all the time a community fighting and successfully stops an industry from coming in. But that industry's just gonna pick up and go somewhere else. That's why it's very very important to build networks of people, organizations of people that are larger than local. And we resisted forming a national organization because we could have done that. Instead a call was made for us to go back to our communities and organize, from the grassroots, regional networks to struggle for environmental justice. And that was a road that the Southern Organizing Committee played in the south. When we started this work in the south, there were a few groups, and they were very very isolated. We started the work by organizing for one year across the south, which... It culminated, that organizing, with a conference in New Orleans in 1992 called "Community Labor: Conference for Environmental Justice". And we expected fifteen hundred people. We got over twenty-five hundred people. We were overwhelmed. It was a logistical nightmare. But it was an indication to us, the desperation and the extent of the problem. And when you organize people around their needs, you can help them connect the problem they're facing with the source of the problem. And that's the beauty about environmental justice, because there's a lot of issues in this. You know, we're running over here to fight this one issue, and over here to fight this one issue. And we're not really getting to the root causes of the problems. And that's the beauty of environmental justice. We recognize that environmental injustice is caused by a system that values profit over human life. And we're not gonna get rid of environmental injustices or environmental racism or class based discrimination without some sort of economic restructuring. It is the corporations. And the corporations control the politicians in this country. And until we are more effective at targeting the guilty parties, we will continue to be in this vicious cycle. And we can't just target them for... to stop polluting in this community. They're polluting all over the world. And we're not so romantic to think that we can just get rid of all of this. But we have to begin to think about transforming this, to return to more natural ways of doing things. And if we don't, our children's children... maybe our children can survive it but certainly our children's children may not have a world to live in that's healthy to produce life. Phillip Babich: Eleven Superfund sites are located in EPA Region 9, which includes California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and the Pacific Islands. Among those sites are five air-force bases, an army depot, a laundry, a landfill, an airport, DC metals company, and Pemaco, Inc. Pemaco is a former chemical blending facility which began operating in the 1940s in Maywood, CA, a predominantly Latino community in the southeast Los Angeles area. The company used hazardous substances: chlorinated solvents, aromatic solvents and flammable liquids. Lux chemicals bought the operations in 1988, but five years later the entire facility burned to the ground. The site was to become a public park until EPA tests found high levels of volatile organic compounds in the soil and groundwater. They ordered a clean-up using incineration to burn away the toxic materials. EPA officials assured the public that the emissions posed no threat to their health. On February 19 of this year in Maywood, Green Action and a number of other community groups came together at the Heliotrope elementary school located two block from the incinerator to hold a press conference, calling for the operations to be shut down. Veronica Muro is a resident of Maywood and attended the press conference. Veronica Muro: I am asking the community to join in this fight so that our children can enjoy a better future. I don't agree with this incinerator operating here. I would not want my children in the future to develop illnesses such as cancer. This message is being sent to President Clinton. If he sees this information in the media, to become involved and say something to the EPA government. Phillip Babich: The east Los Angeles Pemaco site was shut down on March 4th after environmental groups successfully confronted the EPA regarding the toxic materials their operations was emitting. Bradley Angel of the environmental group Green Action worked on a similar issue in Oakland, California, and joined the fight in Maywood. Bradley Angel: The problem that's brought us to Maywood is that the USEPA has not been truthful. They never told the people that there was an incinerator. They called it a "thermal-oxidizer". They had done the same thing in Oakland, California, where they had installed it at a Superfund site, told the residents there only salt and steam is coming out. Green Action, once we found out, we alerted residents that the EPA was lying to them. This wasn't a case of not fully disclosing. The EPA knew very well it wasn't just salt and steam. It's salt, steam and a whole host of toxic chemicals including dioxin. In Oakland, the EPA for a couple of weeks this past summer ran around claiming, "Okay, we admit Green Action was right. Toxics are coming out. But it couldn't possibly be dioxin." A week or two later, they were apologizing for that, admitting it was dioxin. From that Oakland incinerator which we got shut down working with the community, we asked them where else. And that, again, led us to Maywood. Here they claimed that if there were emissions, it wasn't leaving the fence line. A total lie. They claimed, when we inquired, that it was half a mile from the school. False. It's two tenths of a mile from an elementary school. They claimed that there wasn't residences right next to it. False. They're across the street. Shereen Meraji: You're listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. This program can now be heard across the United States and Canada, in Haiti, South Africa, and around the world on Radio for Peace International short wave. You can also hear us on the internet. If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, or you would like to learn how you can get involved with Making Contact, please give us a call. It's toll-free: 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tape and transcript orders. That's 800-529-5736. We also welcome comments and suggestions for future programs. Phillip Babich: The EPA finally admitted that, as in Oakland, the emissions from the Pemaco site probably contained dioxins, which are linked to cancer. Environmentalists and many scientists have been saying for years that these compounds are deadly. Green Action and other environmental groups recommend that all production of dioxins be halted immediately. Bradley Angel: Bradley Angel: The US Environmental Protection Agency has pretty much completed a five year, incredibly comprehensive study of the dangers of dioxin. This study, the name is The Draft Dioxin Reassessment Study, was actually prompted by the chemical industry a number of years ago, who were saying that environmentalists were exaggerating the dangers of dioxin. Well, it backfired on the chemical industry, because the US EPA's own study has found that dioxin is super toxic in minute levels of exposure. And not only is it linked to cancer, but actually at even lower levels of exposure it can cause reproductive, developmental, immune problems and many other illnesses. As if that isn't bad enough, the US EPA's own study has shown that everybody has, already in our bodies, background levels of dioxin from other exposure, industrial pollution, that can cause some of these ill health effects to occur. So therefore, any additional exposure, even in minute doses, can trigger these ill health effects. And the EPA knows this. This is their own studies. Cynthia Babich: The other site that is in my community is called the Montros Chemical Site. And they were one of the largest manufacturers of DDT up until 1982. And one of the main reasons we're here is recently, in September of last year, the EPA finished an emergency removal. Phillip Babich: Cynthia Babich is with the Del Amo Action Committee of Communities Against Toxics in Torrence, and came to the help of residents in Maywood after she experienced a similar fight in her community. Cynthia Babich: "Emergency Removal" are terms they use when they don't want to go through the proper process of inputting with the community and meetings. When they have an Emergency Removal, everything flies out the door as far as process is concerned, and they're going in there to do a job. Well, I could see how that would be really important, but sometimes they hide behind that terminology. And in an Emergency Removal that they just finished up in my neighborhood in September of last year, which they started four years ago -- and we're still trying to figure out how it can be an Emergency Removal four years later -- but they dug up the DDT from my neighborhood and took it to an incinerator in Port Arthur, Texas, which was an all black community. And we were basically flat out lied to and told it was not going to a community of color. And we got some funds together and flew down there to be on a panel with this community and indeed found out that we were being fed misinformation. So part of why we're here is we want the folks to know in these agencies that we're always willing to help work with them on alternatives, which there are quite a few of at this time to incinerators. But you can't simply take the poison from my backyard and take it and put it in somebody else's backyard. And you take a chemical in one form that's under the ground, where it's not being exposed, people aren't being exposed to it right now in the groundwater, and simply change it and put it out in the air. So one of my sites is slated for this soil vapor extraction unit. And I'd like to stop it here in Maywood, and let them know don't even bother setting up in my neighborhood. Dan Hickman: During the last four years, we've been fighting a recycle concrete dump, right directly across from a residential neighborhood. Phillip Babich: Dan Hickman of Huntington Park, a neighboring community: Dan Hickman: And we're received a lot of help from organizations, Communities for a Better Environment, and other local organizations. And I feel that it's my responsibility to come over here and help the City of Maywood residents to get rid of this thing, or at least to shut it down. Phillip Babich: Alicia Rivera from Communities for a Better Environment talked about why such coalitions are important to help address these problems. Alicia Rivera: Unfortunately, a lot of people, the people that are polluting. And sometimes in regulatory agencies try to say that there is always outsiders coming to agitate the people. Unfortunately, that's what it takes, because sometimes the community is low-income, they speak only one language, and they could not know what's going on. They do not participate in the process of the city council hearings, they are not eligible to vote. They are recent immigrants, and there are a lot of barriers for them participating in what's happening. Much less, knowing what chemicals might be coming out of a stack. And how will it, in the short and long term, will affect their lives and their children's lives. It's been a total shock to the community to say, "The place where they have told you that they are going to put a park, and you can just see it at the end of the street here, the incinerator that you see there might be emitting very dangerous toxics. Toxics that might affect your ability to have children, to have developmental problems, cancer, and others." People don't know. And it takes... once they get the information they will become involved. As you can see there were people here at the press conference who just heard a couple of minutes ago, through the flyer, what we were doing. And they said, "This is not fair. I want to be there." And there were people chanting there, and there were people saying, "I don't want this in my community. I wasn't aware and I am going to do something." Arnoldo Garcia: ? La tierra is the king of trabaja, Emiliano Zapata. The Earth belongs to those who work with it, Emiliano Zapata. The Earth belongs to those who love her. The Earth belongs to those who plant seeds with their body to germinate light. The Earth does not belong to those who pollute her. I will never belong to those who pollute the Earth. Our memory is a time bomb: Our memory of the four colors, our memory of the land, of the Earth. Our memory of a different sky, of different times. Our memory our time here on Earth can not be erased. Our memory is a sensitive time bomb that will explode under the trenderesses of pressure. The notes of a music, a word with fresh roots smelling of moist earth and mud. The long hair of our happiness. The rain of our ancestors. We have a long memory. A tree falling in the forest of their forgetfulness, as they moved us into deserts which they believed uninhabitable, as they moved us into migrant camps near the fields to produce their foods, as they moved us into the inner cities of their wild abandonment. Chief Joseph is calling us to battle. He said, "From where the sun shines and as long as the rivers will flow I shall fight no more." Well the sun is no longer shining The rivers are dammed and poisoned "To battle!" Chief Joseph cries, "Until the rivers run again. Until our own self determination and the sun cultivates the Earth in her hands, grass in our bloods." But Chief Joseph lies frozen in the sun. Wounded heart, we dip our hands in the warmth of his blood. I can read the past and the future that lies before us. As I was driving in my car this morning, I was choking indigenous peoples. I choked my sons. I choked the Great Plains. I choked the wind and the sun. I choked them all to death with my accelerator to the floor. The new spiritual mantras reduces leady missions all the way to sustainability. I ate ten acres of Amazonian rain forest, my hamburger queens and kings, my meals, my big meals of habitat and cultures. We are not a disposable culture. We have sown the seeds of our own fertility, while others have sown the seeds of their own sterility. You cannot compost plastic. Ten million years from now, you'll still be cursin' us as our tune blows and the bones of our people lie scattered in garbage dumps. "I am nature," you can say. Our pigmentation is poisoned. The color of my skin puts me closer to toxic wastes Farm workers emerge from the mist of fields soaked in the stomach of supermarkets Smokestacks, incinerators, highways, health systems, sprawl, Our words make peoples Our words make the wind howl in our throat. And our pigmentation is poison. The environment, you say, is green. The earth, we say, is brown. The sky, you say, is blue. But our pigmentation is poisoned. I am half-peoples half natures the freedom of wild animals, ants and insects, rainbows of the earth and trees, grasses. The spiders are my sisters. The men, the women, the children, the elderly with or without a bandana are also my brothers and sisters. I wish I had hands and tongues like a centipede or a clandestine scorpion, so that I could speak with the dust of our ancestors, the mountains and the caves. My hair, the fauna and the flora. My feet, the roots of the pitaya fruit. My skin, the communities of the rainforest. My eyes, the ancient wells. My lungs, the thunder the lightning and storm. My desire, the fields of corn on the steepest of hillsides. My tongue, the tree-trunks chopped down for shelter or fire wood. We are half human half nature I tell you The fertile space of our struggles But these days do not listen to us They do not listen to our complaints They do not understand our hopes, they do not understand our happiness, our love. These are deaf, mute and dumb days and we resist our televised muteness. My throat grumbles with disgruntled songs And my desire wants to embrace her Put her in my mouth, make her explode in the bed of our dreams. Make her pregnant with wings and winds. The Earth belongs to those who work with her The Earth belongs to those who love her The Earth belongs to those who plants seeds with her body to germinate light. Phillip Babich: Arnoldo Garcia, a poet/activist working with the Urban Habitat program in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was accompanied by jazz bassist and activist Devin Hoff. The song, "Lonely Woman," is by Ornette Colemen. Connie Tucker: Some people question whether or not this phenomenon is in fact environmental racism and class based discrimination. Phillip Babich: Connie Tucker is executive director of the Southern Organizing Committee for Economic and Social Justice. Connie Tucker: Some people say that "Oh, they're just doing it where people are powerless." But we know for a fact, for example, in the community of Warren County, North Carolina, where the term "environmental racism" was coined in the mid to late seventies, that that community rose up. It struggled hard. In fact, it had every national organization, civil rights organization in the country there helping them build this fight. Even former Congressman Walter Fontroy was arrested there. So it had a lot... it was the first time that a community, a community of color, rose up to fight the siting of toxics in their community. And in Warren County, it's I think about a ninety percent community of color, primarily African-Americans in that community. Yet with all of this power of the people, they were unable to stop the siting of a landfill which was going to store PCB contaminated soil. They said that those soils would eventually contaminate the community. And now, as they predicted, when they began the site there in the mid seventies, that the contamination would occur. It did occur. And they are now in a very principled way, attempting to figure out a way to decontaminate that community rather than take that out to another community of color. Now it's a pattern. It's a historical pattern. When we grew up, the worst of whatever -- of the communities that I lived in, the African communities where I lived, when I grew up -- everything, the worst that this society had came to our community. And I don't think that was just because we were powerless. I think it was also because we were black. Now we see it happening in low income white communities -- for example, in the Appalachia. We see the same kind of symptoms that we see in African communities in this country. Phillip Babich: That's it for this edition of Making Contact, a look at the environmental justice movement. Thanks for listening. And special thanks this week to Nancy Pearlman and Sue Supriano for recorded portions. We had production assistance from Stephanie Welch, Courtney Malone, and Eric Hamako. Laura Livoti is out managing director. Peggy Law is executive director. Our production assistant is Shereen Meraji. Norman Solomon is senior advisor. Our national producer is David Barsamian. And I'm your host and managing producer Phillip Babich. If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts. That's 800-529-5736. Making Contact is an independent production. We're committed to providing a forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. If you have suggestions for future programs, we'd like to hear from you. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter Trio. Bye for now. |